# Nonhuman Personhood **Domain:** Rights / Animal Cognition / Legal Theory **Doc Type:** Canonical Rights Node **Maturity:** Evolving ## Definition **Nonhuman personhood** is the proposal that some entities outside _Homo sapiens_ should possess legal or moral standing based on capacities, relationships or interests rather than species membership alone. ## Evolutionary Nexus Primatology and human-origins research in [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] dissolve a simple human/nonhuman cognitive boundary. Machine-rights theory cannot ignore animals whose social and cognitive lives already challenge species-exclusive personhood. ## Governance Context Personhood need not be all-or-nothing. Standing can protect bodily integrity, habitat, association and freedom from destructive experimentation without granting every human civic power. ## See Also [[wiki/Primatology|Primatology]], [[wiki/Recognition Threshold|Recognition Threshold]], [[wiki/Relational Personhood|Relational Personhood]], [[wiki/Rights|Rights]] ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "A.I. rights are liable to expand to more and more A.I. over time." > **— Moshe Hoffman**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Artificial Intelligence Rights Will Expand by Moshe Hoffman|Artificial Intelligence Rights Will Expand by Moshe Hoffman]] > "If humans show real machine-like intelligence, do they deserve to be treated like machines?" > **— Chris DiBona**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Identity/Should Humans With Machine Intelligence Be Treated Like Machines by Chris DiBona|Should Humans With Machine Intelligence Be Treated Like Machines by Chris DiBona]] > “It is not too early to construct Turing Test 2.0 tests of 'human citizenship' that attempt to capture the full complexity of the sorts of beings that we would have live among us as equals.” > **— Steve Fuller**, *2014, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Personhood/Citizenship Needs a Turing Test for Beings We Live Among by Steve Fuller|Citizenship Needs a Turing Test for Beings We Live Among by Steve Fuller]] > “A good place to start would be with a sympathetic rendering of long-standing—and too easily dismissed—'anthropomorphic' attributions to animals and machines. Welfare State 2.0 policies could be then designed to enable a wide assortment of candidate beings—from carbon to silicon—to meet the requisite standard of citizenship implied in such attributions.” > **— Steve Fuller**, *2014, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Personhood/From Carbon to Silicon Every Candidate Being Needs a Standard by Steve Fuller|From Carbon to Silicon Every Candidate Being Needs a Standard by Steve Fuller]] > “How smart does another animal have to be for us to decide not to eat it?” > **— Diana Reiss**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Personhood/How Intelligent Must an Animal Be Before We Refuse to Eat It by Diana Reiss|How Intelligent Must an Animal Be Before We Refuse to Eat It by Diana Reiss]] > “Any behavior exhibited by young children that is taken as evidence of the early emergence of intelligence will, when subsequently exhibited by nonhumans, be interpreted by many humans as a set of simple stimulus-response associations lacking cognitive processing, whereas the stimulus-response explanation will rarely be used to re-interpret the behavior of the child.” > **— Irene Pepperberg**, *2004 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Personhood/Animal Intelligence Faces a Double Standard by Irene Pepperberg|Animal Intelligence Faces a Double Standard by Irene Pepperberg]] > “We are not the measuring stick for [other animals’] lives.” > **— Carl Safina**, *Beyond Words: Carl Safina, Rutgers faculty interview* [[reminders/Human Animality/Humans Are Not the Measure of Animal Lives by Carl Safina|Humans Are Not the Measure of Animal Lives by Carl Safina]] > “Is another species our biological relative or a resource?” > **— David Suzuki**, *We are the world; we must act on that understanding, scientist-authored David Suzuki Foundation essay, January 14, 2016* [[reminders/Human Animality/Is Another Species Kin or a Resource by David Suzuki|Is Another Species Kin or a Resource by David Suzuki]]